5 Weird and Wonderful Beauty Moments From Director John Waters Inspired by Today’s Jeremy Scott Show

“Plastic fantastic,” “beautiful trash,” and “tongue-in-cheek” were just a few of the terms used to describe the more-is-more beauty prescription backstage at Jeremy Scott today. “But if we [have] to pick one, it’s John Waters,” said makeup artist Kabuki, as he painted a dramatic black wing of eyeliner onto model Anna Cleveland with MAC Blacktrack Fluidline—a swoosh that could have easily been plucked straight from the faces of the cult film director’s favorite strange beauties like Debbie Harry, Traci Lords, and Cookie Mueller. “It’s spiky—cute, but also aggressive.” Along the bottom lash line was a drawn-on set of faux fringe. “It’s not the Twiggy sixties, it’s subversive,” he clarified, before executing a neon orange lip.

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Next, backstage hairstylist Eugene Souleiman began fixing wigs in Waters’s favorite shades of white blonde, rich red, and shining brunette onto the tops of each model’s head, then “teasing [them] to death” and allowing big barrel curls to hang loose in the back, rendering the supermodel cast of Gigi Hadid, Taylor Hill, and Cindy Bruna into a nearly unrecognizable army of quirky clones. “We just felt like the ceilings were so high that we needed to do something with some drama to it—crazy big hair like John Waters’s Hairspray,” said Souleiman. As for the acrylic nails in bright shades of pink, blue, orange, and yellow? Also inspired by the “fabulous long nails” of Waters’s favorite heroines. Because when it comes to mastering so-wrong-it’s-right hair and makeup, no one did it better than Divine, Liz Renay, and Melanie Griffith at the hands of John Waters. Here, a look back at a few of our favorite beauty moments from the counterculture director.